This article is within the scope of WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Crime and Criminal Biography articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Crime and Criminal BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyCrime-related articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of women on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.WomenWikipedia:WikiProject WomenTemplate:WikiProject WomenWikiProject Women articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Death, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Death on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DeathWikipedia:WikiProject DeathTemplate:WikiProject DeathDeath articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject California, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CaliforniaWikipedia:WikiProject CaliforniaTemplate:WikiProject CaliforniaCalifornia articles
Many issues with this page. There are few citations. The few references provided are to blogs, which are not reliable at all. This seems like a case notable and unique enough to have an article, if the information that has been provided is verifiable from reliable sources. Rossbawse (talk) 00:31, 16 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"The phone calls could not be traced, because the killer did not stay on the phone long enough" appears multiple times in this article, and also in the sources for it. This sounds like typical Hollywood garble - calls can be traced from the phone companies records regardless. Probably this is sloppy reporting. Someguy1221 (talk) 20:47, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Someguy1221: Scott's mother said, "We had the line tapped but he either didn't stay on long enough or called when it wasn't tapped." I don't know much about tapping phones. If you could provide more information about tapping phones then that would be helpful. Melonkelon (talk) 06:35, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You have motivated me to look into this further, and I'm probably wrong. Prior to digital telephone switches, but after manual switching, call tracing was not instantaneous, and telephone companies did not keep records of where local calls went. It's difficult to research since all information about pre-digital call tracing ceased to be relevant by the time of the internet, so I only have some old books to go by that aren't online. In this era the tracing process was quite involved, and could indeed fail if the caller did not stay on the line long enough. Something called a "call trace jack" existed and could be inserted into a switchboard to facilitate the process. In light of this information, the quote you provided makes sense. Some parts of the US were still using analog switches into the 90s. Guess I brought this complaint up for nothing - whoops. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:55, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
